Does anyone know what guilt feels like? Does anyone realize how pain tastes? Does anyone know how it feels to live through years and years and years with the knowledge of having destroyed another life? And to, despite everything, hate the possessor of that life? Even when that person is your only daughter?
No.
Through long years of learning things the hard way, that is at least one thing I really have learnt: no-one knows what there things feel like.
But I do.
She's my child, my daughter, my flesh and my blood and yet I loathe her with every fiber of my long ago defeated body.
I cannot help it.
I have tried to fight it, but I have experienced that that would be equal to fighting myself. And I have fought myself- and I have lost. Minerva McGonagall can fight anyone- but Minerva McGonagall cannot fight herself. It's a sad story, in fact, but it is my story.
My own, secret, long-forgotten tale, the Wild, Romantic Adventures of Minerva, the Heroine… also know as Strict Old McGonagall, the Woman Without a Life.
Ironic, isn't it? The great Paradox –with a clear capital letter!- of my existence.
And it's a wrong one anyway. I have a life- I had one.
I've lived it long ago.
But no-one knows. I've never told anyone, except Albus. Him, I had to tell. I had to explain to him why I, after years and tears, had returned to Hogwarts as my last sanctuary.
But even he- even he doesn't know my child survived. Perhaps he suspects it- but he cannot know- not for sure. I don't think he's ever linked the child she was to the woman we all know.
He must suspect something, though- he must suspect a reason behind my pertinent refusals to marry him. He proposes to me averagely once a year- he has now for about forty years. I have refused every single time.
For Heaven's sake- I am perhaps the greatest sinner of a woman alive, how can I ever marry a man like Albus? Albus is good, righteous, noble, and what am I?
I hope he does realize, though, what he means to me.
My refusals to marry him have nothing to do with what I feel or what I don't feel for Albus.
It's just the mere fact that it is not right.
Albus doesn't know the entire truth, so he cannot understand it, and yet, I have the strange feeling he does.
Albus is a very unusual man.
He is my best friend and the one I trust the above everyone, yet he doesn't know.
But who knows, after all?
I sometimes wonder if- if she knows. She, the subject of it all- the point, the pivot, the subject of it all… the reason.
He probably has told her, I believe. Yes- of course, he must have told her. He is not stupid- don't reveal to much, don't conceal to much. He can never have hidden this for her.
He must have told her the truth. After she graduated.
I've met her as a student of mine, of course- she attended Hogwarts. You know, I sometimes wonder why he's done that. Send her to Hogwarts. It would have been so easy for him to send her to Durmstrang- or somewhere else, for that matter.
Was it his cruelty that brought her to me, or his so well-hidden kindness? I don't know.
Both, perhaps.
But so, I have taught her, my child, I have taught her and I have thus watched her from afar. Always busy keeping up the façade of stern Professor Gryffindor, death frightened to give away her ancestry by a look, by a gesture. She must have seen she does slightly resemble me. Not her eyes, no, but the hair… They were blondes, her hair was black- that must have proven something to her.
But I have said nothing. I have watched and watched.
And ve seen her heart be corrupted, more and more, every day, month, year.
And I have done- nothing.
No.
Through long years of learning things the hard way, that is at least one thing I really have learnt: no-one knows what there things feel like.
But I do.
She's my child, my daughter, my flesh and my blood and yet I loathe her with every fiber of my long ago defeated body.
I cannot help it.
I have tried to fight it, but I have experienced that that would be equal to fighting myself. And I have fought myself- and I have lost. Minerva McGonagall can fight anyone- but Minerva McGonagall cannot fight herself. It's a sad story, in fact, but it is my story.
My own, secret, long-forgotten tale, the Wild, Romantic Adventures of Minerva, the Heroine… also know as Strict Old McGonagall, the Woman Without a Life.
Ironic, isn't it? The great Paradox –with a clear capital letter!- of my existence.
And it's a wrong one anyway. I have a life- I had one.
I've lived it long ago.
But no-one knows. I've never told anyone, except Albus. Him, I had to tell. I had to explain to him why I, after years and tears, had returned to Hogwarts as my last sanctuary.
But even he- even he doesn't know my child survived. Perhaps he suspects it- but he cannot know- not for sure. I don't think he's ever linked the child she was to the woman we all know.
He must suspect something, though- he must suspect a reason behind my pertinent refusals to marry him. He proposes to me averagely once a year- he has now for about forty years. I have refused every single time.
For Heaven's sake- I am perhaps the greatest sinner of a woman alive, how can I ever marry a man like Albus? Albus is good, righteous, noble, and what am I?
I hope he does realize, though, what he means to me.
My refusals to marry him have nothing to do with what I feel or what I don't feel for Albus.
It's just the mere fact that it is not right.
Albus doesn't know the entire truth, so he cannot understand it, and yet, I have the strange feeling he does.
Albus is a very unusual man.
He is my best friend and the one I trust the above everyone, yet he doesn't know.
But who knows, after all?
I sometimes wonder if- if she knows. She, the subject of it all- the point, the pivot, the subject of it all… the reason.
He probably has told her, I believe. Yes- of course, he must have told her. He is not stupid- don't reveal to much, don't conceal to much. He can never have hidden this for her.
He must have told her the truth. After she graduated.
I've met her as a student of mine, of course- she attended Hogwarts. You know, I sometimes wonder why he's done that. Send her to Hogwarts. It would have been so easy for him to send her to Durmstrang- or somewhere else, for that matter.
Was it his cruelty that brought her to me, or his so well-hidden kindness? I don't know.
Both, perhaps.
But so, I have taught her, my child, I have taught her and I have thus watched her from afar. Always busy keeping up the façade of stern Professor Gryffindor, death frightened to give away her ancestry by a look, by a gesture. She must have seen she does slightly resemble me. Not her eyes, no, but the hair… They were blondes, her hair was black- that must have proven something to her.
But I have said nothing. I have watched and watched.
And ve seen her heart be corrupted, more and more, every day, month, year.
And I have done- nothing.